HOUR Magazine
"Terrific, fearless performances ....................The art of dancemaking doesn't get much better.."
Culturebot
"George Stamos is a great mover. He dances with precision, style, grace and incredibly fluidity....Stamos uses a number of performative strategies to interest effect. One is the ingenious use of video..."
iDANZ Critix Corner
Indyish.com
".. it is breathtaking. If reservoir-pneumatic has a problem, it’s that the choreography is so strong that everything else around it starts to look merely good."
The Chronicle Herald
"..a playful carnival of dance and theatre, with some sweet, poignant moments and a refreshing light-heartedness. .......The ending is one of the most beautiful, evocative and quietly uplifting ones I've seen in contemporary dance ...."
GLOBE AND MAIL
"His challenging, episodic, prop-filled, imaginative works follow a logic all their own............... Stamos is continuing to follow his own original choreographic pathway...."
Le Devoir
"La danse ici vole très haut, exigeant des interprètes une grande précision et
un rare abandon. Les corps ondulent ou se convulsent, sont agités de brèves
petites secousses.....Reservoir-Pneumatic éclabousse — au premier rang, littéralement! —, et ne se
limite pas à faire des ronds dans l'eau: on a des bulles, qui éclatent de
manière jouissive."
Reviews-
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
These Guys Are Pigs: Men Who Dance
Exploring the animal within is one way of describing what’s going on in Liklik Pik, a 60-minute multi-media work by Montreal-based choreographer and dancer George Stamos.
In particular, it’s his inner pig which appears most to fascinate Stamos
who, together with dancing partner Dany Desjardins, wears a pig mask as
part of his exploration of the complex relationship between humans and
animals.
The piece, which debuted Tuesday night as part of the TwoByFour festival
of original duets which Dancemakers is presenting at its Centre of
Creation studios inside Toronto’s Distillery District through to the end
of the month, also uses grunting and snorting as well as the childhood
ditty, This Little Piggy Went to Market (spoken here in snippets of French), to cement the pig as the work’s totemic theme.
But such literalness aside, Liklik Pik (the title appears derived from the Tok Pisin language of Papua, New Guinea, in which pik
is the word for "pig") also works on a level of poetic association,
using voice narration, repetitive movement, music, ambient sound and
video projection to present the multidimensional bond with a disarming
level of success.
Humans co-exist with animals, as Stamos demonstrates
charmingly when he and Desjardins speak nostalgically of all the pets
they’ve ever had. But animals exist also within humans in the form of
certain so-called lower life behaviours which Stamos, a graduate of The
School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, investigates while
undulating his crotch in a polyester suit, the unofficial uniform of the
lounge lizard.
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| Photo by Johnny Ranger |
Here, Stamos is having the audience on, and it is a clever bit of sabotage in that it not only breaks down the proverbial fourth wall but clears the way for the action which follows, much of it disturbingly bestial as when one of dancers (pig masked again) simulates urinating on the other lying like a dog on the floor: humans become animals through a loss of moral direction, a loss of civilized control.
This message is scarily amplified in an earlier segment in which Stamos and Desjardins roll in synch on the floor to the taped voice of a radio announcer describing last summer’s scientific feat of 150 human-animal hybrid embryos grown in British laboratories. This part of the show is fact, not fiction, and it instantly sends a shiver down the spine of those who, just moments ago, were merrily munching on cake in the front row.
Stamos and Desjardins then flesh out the analogy further, walking on all fours and slyly encircling each other like predators in hunt of prey. It’s a deadly serious game. And it makes for terrific theatre. With Liklik Pik, Stamos effectively holds up a mirror to society to reflect the beast coiled within, waiting to attack. Oink to that.
George Stamos’ CLOAK at BAC
Posted by Andy on June 18, 2010
George Stamos is a great mover. He dances with precision, style, grace and incredibly fluidity. In CLOAK, which we saw on Thursday night at the the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Stamos was joined by Luciane Pinto and Clara Furey in a three-person interdisciplinary exploration of identity.
The performance
begins with Stamos having a conversation with himself – and that seems to set
the tone for the evening. Though there are three performers, the way they
interact suggests that these are actually multiple aspects of a single self,
sometimes in concert, sometimes in conflict.
Stamos uses a number of performative strategies to interest effect. One is the ingenious use of video to mix performers – at several points in the show one or another performer is hidden by the video screen, with the bottom half being live and the top half being video.
This is a very literal expression of the hybrid self and sometimes it works better than others. Particularly interesting was a moment when Stamos was stage right, being videotaped live and projected onto the screen, as Luciane Pinto did some rigorous, balletic legwork below the screen.
Another successful tact was when the performers used white fabric sleeves to cover their heads, making blank masks which they drew on with magic markers. At one point Stamos appears with one of these blank masks and proceeds to work through layer after layer, drawing a face on and removing the mask, only to reveal another blank mask beneath.
There were some clever and amusing costuming choices, particularly a sequence where Luciane and George appeared as outsized bunnies, like an evil version of Jessica Rabbit.
GLOBE AND MAIL
September 29, 2008
A Twisted Dance of Brutality
By PAULA CITRON
RESERVOIR-PNEUMATIC
George Stamos
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
Montreal choreographer George Stamos has always been idiosyncratic. His challenging, episodic, prop-filled, imaginative works follow a logic all their own. His new work Reservoir-Pneumatic demonstrates that Stamos is continuing to follow his own original choreographic pathway.
In fact, one often feels one has arrived in the middle of a Stamos piece, missing both the beginning and the end. In Reservoir-Pneumatic, the cast is in motion as the audience walks in, and the action continues as the lights go off at the end. The work is a snapshot from the continuum of life.
The meaning of Reservoir-Pneumatic is important as a clue to link together the seemingly unrelated parade of vignettes Stamos presents. "Reservoir" certainly means the same in both English and French, and in this work, I believe it refers to that part inside us that contains our basic instincts.
"Pneumatic" in English most commonly refers to objects filled with compressed gas, and this could certainly pertain to the work in terms of explosive human behaviour and interaction. A lesser-known English meaning, but one more common in French is pneumatic as concerning or involving the soul or spirit.
Stamos depicts the grotesqueries of life, as one audience member fittingly observed. His own background notes describe the piece as exploring our psychophysical reserves that inspire survival. Just being human is an experiment where the comprehension of oneself and others is always shifting in an environment of perpetual change.
The theatre is transformed into what Stamos calls play areas. There is a white rug with a projection behind it depicting a winter landscape. Other vignettes occur on a black rug around which are festooned piles of clothing. The third place is a water trough filled with melting ice wired for sound.
On either side of the stage are composers Owen Chapman and Jackie Gallant performing the live electronic soundscape, which conjures up violent acts.
Dancers Clara Furey and Luciane Pinto are first placed in the winter scene wearing parkas. Their amazing bodies are able to arch and contort in such a way that they are facing backward, but their arms and the backs of their heads are toward the audience portraying the front of the body, their faces concealed with hair. Their bizarre physicality and hairy faces present a picture of a most awkward romantic encounter.
Stamos appears and sheds seven layers of tops while performing bone-crunching gymnastic twists. This is a nod to our shifting self-image.
Furey and Pinto are seen as naked lovers except for black panty briefs. Their encounter involves a twisting of limbs that becomes a visual puzzle. It is impossible to distinguish which arm or leg belongs to which body. The women also, at separate points, stick their faces in the melting ice. Pinto drinks by squeezing her soaking hair into her mouth. Chapman even makes eerie sounds from the wired ice. Stamos is also joined by Chapman in movement reminiscent of cross-country skiing. The end is a weird shadow play, as the three pairs of legs belonging to the dancers are seen at the bottom of the screen depicting projections of miniature torsos. It is a wildly bizarre dance of distortion.
In fact, in all the vignettes, absurdity is shown through unbelievably complicated physicality. The three dancers have the most supple and malleable of bodies. Rarely in this piece do Stamos, Furey or Pinto perform with natural movement. Their bodies become entwined in alarming fashion. Even in solos they are bent and twisted like pretzels.
As a result, Reservoir-Pneumatic is a work on the dark side. It is about the desperation of survival and the frantic search for human interaction. What Stamos has done in this piece is skewer our perceptions away from the norm so we can see a nasty truth. Life is brutal and just the sheer act of living can make us ugly.
reservoir-pneumatic continues at Montreal's Agora de la danse, Oct. 15 to 18.
CTVglobemedia Publishing, Inc
iDANZ Critix Corner
by Julie
Fotheringham
Performance: New Dance Alliance, Performance Mix Festival
Venue: Joyce
SoHo,New York City
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Dance Review: Hit or Mix, New Dance Alliance, Performance Mix Festival
True to the hit or miss nature of mixed programs, the New Dance Alliance, Performance Mix Festival at Joyce SoHo is just that. On Friday it's specifically, hit, partial hit, hit, miss, miss, in that order.
Hit number one is a multimedia solo by Montréal based George Stamos. He's a sinuous, articulate body in black briefs and a tattoo. He stands behind a hovering projection screen so that his actual lower half lines up with his projected upper half. The projection footage is manipulated, juxtaposing reality with impossibility, both within one body. As is the temptation in multimedia work, Stamos gets too "multi" in too short of time. The variety of ideas in this short solo could build an evening-length work, and with his animalistic movement and engaging images, I could have watched him for an entire evening.
HOUR
Magazine
hour.ca
February 19th, 2009
Bélanger
& Stamos
Showing some skin
by Philip Szporer
Two stellar, visceral works come back to add more colour (and more heat) to the February blues. L'Agora de la Danse continues its winning season by bringing back major works from two of this city's primo dance artists. Martin Bélanger's acclaimed solo Spoken Word/Body, from 2002, and George Stamos's Reservoir-pneumatic, a hit from just last fall, have played to sold-out houses and are getting welcome renewed exposure.
Skin, sexuality, sensuality, water and shag
galore underscore George Stamos's musings on the physical and emotional
reservoirs we all possess. It's an expressive, entertaining work that tackles
the macro (planet and environment) and the micro (individual bodies) in one
fell swoop.
Terrific, fearless performances by Stamos,
Clara Furey, Jamie Wright and Sarah Williams are centre stage - the
choreographer is able to elicit intimate and personal qualities from these
skilled performers, both as technicians and improvisers. He also subverts
conventional assumptions about gender roles, flipping conventions and ascribing
to a liberating equality that's affecting and ingenious.
The art of dancemaking doesn't get much
better, and it's explored with a spontaneous, free flow of energy in the
dancers' bodies. Stamos doesn't prescribe to the notion that moving is less
intellectual than conceptual work: "I see all the possibilities are in my
palette."
Likewise, DJ and sample composer Owen Chapman
creates a fascinating score - several tracks are composed with a Hammond organ
and the sound of the dancers' intake of breath after a long exhale and pause,
while at the same time he's live-scratching to the audio. Jackie Gallant is his
onstage musical collaborator. The stimulating visual design and mediated images
come from Jonathan Inksetter, Stamos and Chapman.
Next month Stamos takes up a much-sought-after
residency at the Baryshnikov Centre in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen district, so
catch him while you can.........
Reservoir-Pneumatic, to Feb. 21
At Agora de la Danse (840 Cherrier)
Indyish.com
Review: reservoir-pneumatic
16 octobre 2008
by Sylvain Verstricht
In Liklik Pik, the only piece from George
Stamos I had previously seen, he had won me over,
Though it could have been more of the same. I showed up at Agora de la Danse at the last minute and so found myself sitting at the back of the room, where a pair of disembodied, crossed hairy legs was poking out of a curtain. After a musical prologue, the first live image of the dancers consists of two bodies that gain an odd corporality simply by wearing a hoodie backwards. We’ve seen it done before, but the effect works every time.
And then it starts. Two of the female performers split and each dances within a clearly delimited space. Lines also appear delimited, but their legs always go beyond, whether on the horizontal or the vertical. The significant distance between the performers and their going in and out of synchronicity make the section constantly shift between a duo and two solos, creating a dynamism that impressively doesn’t rely on the gratuity of speed.
But dancer Clara Furey does go for speed in the solo that follows. She takes off her shirt and throws herself into a dance that is poignant. She looks like she’s giving it everything she’s got, even at the risk of causing violence to herself. It’s definitely a highlight of the show. She then segues into a series of moves more appropriate for a pop music video, but what might have appeared benign in this mainstream context suddenly becomes troubling when performed by a disrobed dancer who’s just given everything she had, as if we were finally able to see the true nature of these gestures.
Stamos also gets his moment to shine as a performer with a solo full of gesticulation and curves. There is another duo, this time where the dancers intimately interact, that left me with a strange impression of beauty. I believe it’s because the physical connections between them aren’t forced. They don’t grab each other. Instead, they simply lay their limbs on top of each other, their skin barely touching, leaving them free to detach at any moment, which they do, but they always end up connecting again. The beauty is that they connect not because it is imposed on them, but because they both choose to do so.
When all four of them finally dance together (the other two also deserve to get mentioned: Luciane Pinto and Sarah Williams) by constantly entering and exiting one of the delimited spaces, it is breathtaking. If reservoir-pneumatic has a problem, it’s that the choreography is so strong that everything else around it starts to look merely… good. But, who cares, the choreography alone makes it well worth seeing.
reservoir-pneumatic continues until Saturday, October 18. Tickets are 26$, 18$ for students. For more information, call 514.525.1500 or visit www.agoradanse.com.
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The Chronicle Herald
Entertainment, Saturday, October 14, 2006, p. C17
Stamos Choreographs Casually Eye-Popping Program
by Elissa Barnard
Choreographer George Stamos is back in town with a dress-up trunk full of visual surprises.
Not surprisingly, Stamos is also the costume designer for Schatje and Reservoir, which make for a 75-minute dance experience presented by Live Art Productions at the Sir James Dunn Theatre….
The night is a playful carnival of dance and theatre, with some sweet, poignant moments and a refreshing light-heartedness. The audience goes from one odd, eye-popping event to the next taking in a gleeful dance on a sheet of bubble wrap; exotic, glittering Mexican wrestling masks that turn the dancers into Power Rangers, and an amazingly elegant and charming dance by Brazilian dancer Luciane Pinto zipped inside a double base case.
Both Schatje and Reservoir are performed with a casual air of being unstructured and visibly staged with Stamos present as a kind of director. Also orchestrating this show and a key presence is DJ and sample-based composer Owen Chapman, a.k.a. Opositive, who composed the music and performs on stage creating a vast array of dramatic sound as he scratches on a turntable or plays a lullaby on a hurdy gurdy or, after all the night's jangled and computerized sound, sings a sweet and simple song.
Reservoir, marked by a forceful, connected dance between two bare-chested women who are either angry or in love and a puppet show between the Mexican masks, does bottom out towards its end in terms of structure and holding attention, but hang in there.
The ending is one of the most beautiful, evocative and quietly uplifting ones I've seen in contemporary dance and, again, it is a visual surprise in its casual, warm placement of the players, the DJ in his winter jacket finally away from his table of instruments stretched out on the bubble wrap; a naked woman lying expectantly, happily, on a giant white rug; the nearly naked guitarist (Dave Madden) lyrically strumming his guitar. What did that ending mean? "Hope," my friend said simply.
In keeping with the many clothing changes, Reservoir, is, according to Stamos, a piece that "stacks, peels and reassembles protective layers of basic human life in both everyday and special ways."
Though full of story elements, both pieces are essentially non-narrative and their meanings are experienced non-verbally. Stamos, with an effective use of video imagery, puts his unusual stamp, quirky but thoughtful without being ponderous, on themes of sexuality and the nature of performance, the watcher and the watched, identity and relationships and perhaps even global warming as two dancers with parkas sit affectionately side by side as both projections and sound suggest ice and snow and dripping - perhaps the melting of the polar ice cap?
Stamos, whose mix of club dance and contemporary movement has always been singular and enjoyable to watch, is more the choreographer and less the dancer. When he does dance towards the end it is, as usual, wonderful to watch that rapid, fluid, unfolding motion as Reservoir has moved from anger and drama to peace and acceptance of the self and others.
Stamos's work is on again tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are $22 adults, $18 seniors and $15 students and are available at the Dalhousie Arts Centre; call 494-3820 or 1-800-874-1669.
Le Devoir
Danse - Très bien gonflé
16 octobre 2008
Lili Marin
Pour son
premier passage à l'Agora en tant que chorégraphe, George Stamos donne au
studio de la rue Cherrier une atmosphère de boîte de nuit, DJ, seins nus, tapis
poilus blancs et miroir sur le sol inclus. C'est que, non seulement a-t-il
auparavant dansé pour les Navas, Desnoyers et Sinha, mais il a également exercé
son métier dans des établissements qui ferment un peu plus tard.
Cette expérience imprègne reservoir-pneumatic, une version évoluée de la pièce
Reservoir, bien reçue un peu partout en 2006. L'oeuvre présentée à Montréal,
après avoir tenu l'affiche du Dancemakers Studio de Toronto, du 25 au 27
septembre dernier, ne se résume cependant pas à une jolie évocation de ce monde
nocturne. Riche et inspirée, elle explore différents territoires, de l'intime à
celui du spectacle, du sensuel au ludique.
Si les éléments de décor rappellent vaguement l'ambiance du film Exotica, la
magnifique Clara Furey en simple slip fait inévitablement penser au long
métrage La Mort d'un bûcheron, dans lequel Carole Laure se retrouvait à
travailler dans un cabaret. L'univers de George Stamos est toutefois plus
lumineux que ceux d'Atom Egoyan et de Gilles Carle, et la fille ne joue pas la
candeur qu'affectait la mère.
Pleinement consciente de sa parfaite maîtrise technique, elle a ce qu'il faut
pour se frotter à la toujours excellente Sarah Williams, avec qui elle exécute
deux beaux duos, un topless et un habillé. La chorégraphie, stylisée, s'avère
une version post-modernisée du spectacle érotique.
La danse ici vole très haut, exigeant des interprètes une grande précision et
un rare abandon. Les corps ondulent ou se convulsent, sont agités de brèves
petites secousses. Il y a quelque chose d'africain dans la bascule du bassin et
dans l'ouverture de la cage thoracique, qui donne lieu à un intéressant travail
sur le souffle. On dissocie avec virtuosité le haut et le bas, mais on colle au
rythme avec le mouvement.
Créée en direct, la trame sonore intègre des amplifications de sons que font
les danseurs sur le sol ou dans une flaque d'eau, ainsi qu'un peu
d'échantillonnage. La musique accroît le plaisir, de même que les projections
vidéo, hypnotiques au début et comiques à la fin.
Reservoir-pneumatic éclabousse — au premier rang, littéralement! —, et ne se
limite pas à faire des ronds dans l'eau: on a des bulles, qui éclatent de
manière jouissive.
INTERVIEW
Représenter le conflit
9 octobre 2008
George Stamos: "Je veux transmettre l'idée que nous avons d'extraordinaires ressources à l'intérieur de nous et qu'en laissant aller nos jugements et nos peurs sur le corps et la sexualité, nous pouvons être plus vivants, plus inspirés, plus positifs."
George Stamos s'entoure d'une belle brochette
d'artistes pour créer l'univers éclaté de Reservoir-Pneumatic et mettre à
l'épreuve nos perceptions et nos idées reçues.
Formé dans les années 90 à Toronto, Londres,
Amsterdam, puis New York, George Stamos
creuse le sillon des postmodernes américains en cherchant à relier l'art à la
vie quotidienne et en travaillant l'improvisation structurée dans des oeuvres
où la créativité et l'intelligence des interprètes est sérieusement mise à
contribution. "Je cherche de très bons techniciens et improvisateurs qui
soient capables d'avoir un dialogue mature sur la création et de questionner
mes choix, déclare le chorégraphe originaire de Nouvelle-Écosse. C'est le seul
moyen de ne pas rester enfermé dans mon imaginaire."
Excellent danseur, on a pu l'apprécier chez Navas, Desnoyers, Van Grimde, Sinha et d'autres, Stamos poursuit donc l'aventure de Reservoir, menée en 2006, avec la même équipe de danseuses aux caractères et au talent affirmés: Sarah Williams, Luciane Pinto et Clara Furey. Accompagné sur scène par les musiciens Owen Chapman et Jackie Galant, le quatuor suit la trame du spectacle tout en jouissant d'une certaine marge de manoeuvre sur la façon d'interpréter la chorégraphie.
Évoluant dans une scénographie luxuriante et composite agrémentée des éclairages de Lee Anholt et des projections vidéo de Jonathan Inksetter, les artistes s'habillent et se déshabillent au gré de leurs humeurs, ils se rencontrent, se confrontent, incarnant les ressources psychiques et physiques dont chacun dispose pour faire face à l'adversité. "Je veux transmettre l'idée que nous avons d'extraordinaires ressources à l'intérieur de nous et qu'en laissant aller nos jugements et nos peurs sur le corps et la sexualité, nous pouvons être plus vivants, plus inspirés, plus positifs, affirme Stamos. Je veux aussi montrer que regarder un problème de société est une façon d'amorcer un processus de transformation."
UN APPEL A LA TOLERANCE-
L'appel à la tolérance face à la diversité est au coeur de l'oeuvre de Stamos qui offre une perspective non conformiste sur la notion d'écologie planétaire et relationnelle avec un questionnement plus particulièrement aigu sur le genre. La sensualité est bien présente dans Reservoir-pneumatic et, on s'en doute, elle ne cadre pas avec les stéréotypes ambiants. Âmes rigides s'abstenir. Mais si cette pièce organique et conceptuelle est susceptible de déstabiliser le spectateur, elle n'a pas de visée provocatrice.
"J'ai eu toute une période où je privilégiais vraiment des images violentes, les corps dysfonctionnels, etc., raconte l'artiste de 39 ans. Mais, après le 11 septembre, plus personne n'avait besoin de ce genre de rappel, et j'ai pris un tournant plus positif. Dans Reservoir, il y avait une sorte de lumière, de légèreté, de douceur. Mais la vie, ce n'est pas juste ça. Alors en reprenant la création pour la développer, je suis redescendu de mon petit nuage et j'ai essayé de voir comment on pouvait trouver une résolution dans la tension et le conflit, comment on pouvait représenter un bon conflit. J'ai aimé ça en tant qu'artiste et en tant qu'humain."
La signature singulière que peaufine résolument Stamos est le résultat d'influences multiples. De New York, il est revenu avec un certain héritage des postmodernes, la rigueur intellectuelle d'artistes engagés et le goût du métissage des styles. La Californienne Sara Shelton Mann l'a initié au Qi-Gong et au processus collaboratif, après que son premier mentor, Benoît Lachambre, lui ait donné le goût du travail avec les sens et du chaos organisé. Mais avant cela, celui qui avait débuté au Toronto Dance Theater avait aussi été gogo dancer dans les clubs londoniens.
"J'ai fait là une étude approfondie sur la façon d'être en interaction avec le public, de renouveler le mouvement tout en gardant une esthétique claire, et sur la manière de transformer les techniques d'improvisation de la danse sociale pour les amener dans les théâtres." Comme quoi, tout est dans tout.
The Dance Current
A Bazaar of Impressions
Review of "Schatje"
choreographed by George Stamos
Montréal: Jan. 16-19, 2003
by Philip Szporer
“…Stamos
is evolving a recognizable style and format for his performances that seems to
mix the autobiographical with social and political ideas, subverting the
club-world format with intelligent wit, edgy images and a zingy style that is
conceptually devoid of pretension. There's a restless energy and a rawness to
what's happening in the room. The performers in the vignettes have
personalities; they are not hiding the fact that they're performing (and being
very physical) - being exhibitionists for the audience. The show combines sex
and violence and picks apart themes: there's posturing, pill popping, simulated
copulation, body bags, body combat, hand puppets, unison dancing and well-honed
improvisation.
The show starts outside the hall upon arrival. The audience members remove
their street shoes and slip on soft blue fabric medical slippers, in
preparation to circulate through the performance space before settling into
their seats. Two video monitors near the entry to the black box theatre
spotlight Lucite-heeled stripper shoes. The audience enters through the side
door of the stage, with the cast already in place on the performance floor:
Stamos is teetering in similar shoes, in blue tighty briefs and tank top; a
woman is strapped into a body-suit-like garment; a tall man with long blond
hair is prone over a double bass, wearing thigh-high white leather boots, his
tresses blowing in the breeze of a fan. Stamos' face is projected close-up on a
large screen dividing the room. In the video, the camera captures his slighest
facial gesture. Ultimately, he opens his mouth and we see one of his front
teeth is missing. The openness in the video projection is then symbolically
transferred to what is being danced in live performance. …..
…In this creation, Stamos uses the basic grammar that he has gleaned from
working with performer-choreographer Benoît Lachambre. "Schatje" sets
out its themes diffusely and introduces layers of political content. Like
Lachambre, Stamos delves into the particular politics of performance that
flaunts black humour and perverts reason. For the more sheltered spectator,
Stamos offers a sufficient glimpse of the smarm of the tenderloin to keep
people watching. He doesn't do didactic work and, while the overall evocation
is kitsch and synthetic, Stamos' well-worn sense of club life provides the
steady control for his theatrical impulses.
The concept he's chosen - a bazaar of impressions with deliberate intentions -
illustrates a conversation between violence and what he's calling grace, which
is beauty, the recovery from violence and abrasiveness. With Stamos, urgency
and bonding are leavened with humor, a sense of proportion, sincerity. …”
